


Haunted

by Trash



Category: Linkin Park
Genre: Ghosts, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-13
Updated: 2013-11-13
Packaged: 2018-01-01 09:46:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1043371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trash/pseuds/Trash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mike learns that the five stages of grief apply even when you're being haunted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haunted

When Chester died the therapist told me that there are five stages to grief. I actually went to see him six months after Chester’s death. My boss made me, since I kept falling asleep at work. So this guy telling me about grief…I just laughed right in his face.

“Do the five stages even apply to me now? I’m not falling asleep at work because I’m depressed.”

“You can talk to me, Mike.” He says. “You can talk to me about anything you want.”

Yeah sure. As if he won’t freak out when I tell him that the reason I’m not sleeping is because Chester is haunting me.

***

Chester hated everything except cleaning. I’m not even joking. He eventually got a job as a housecleaner so I bought him a French Maid’s outfit and we did it on the newly polished parquet of his living room.

Brad was the first person to hire him because he lives in squalor with rats and fuck knows what else. He says he has a phobia of sponges and steel wool. Chester is on the phone to him but I can hear his voice from where I sit at the kitchen table doing my cereal box maze.

“Tell him to shut the fuck up. Tell him he can’t blame the sponges for his fucking laziness.”

Chester smiles at me but down the phone he says, “Sure, Brad, I’ll come over tomorrow.”

It was borderline obsessive compulsive, how much Chester liked to clean. But Brad was willing to pay him one hundred bucks just for tidying. So I didn’t say anything. Like that he should maybe look for a proper job.

He’d come home after going to Brad’s and laugh with me about the junk he found there. Mostly it was old porn magazines from when he was a teenager and, for whatever reason, horded. It was nice to have something to talk about, though, because for the longest time I felt like we were drifting apart.

And I know I wasn’t the greatest. But I loved him.

And I miss him.

***

So I’m debating whether to tell this guy about my own personal five stages of grief. Denial, for example.

The first day after Chester’s funeral I walked downstairs still in my shirt and pants from the day before. I knew the kitchen would still be a mess from when I trashed it. And I mean really, really trashed it. I don’t think a mug went un-broken. My head and my heart hurt, and I kind of just wanted to jump into traffic.

I was so prepared to see my kitchen looking like a bomb site that I actually stood completely still in the doorway when I got there. The chairs I had previously upturned were now correctly pushed under the table, and the mugs I hadn’t broken were stacked on the counter drying.

Everything was spotless.

So I called Brad who answered after I tried four times and moaned down the phone.

“Did you clean my kitchen, Brad?”

“Mike…I haven’t even cleaned my own kitchen. M’sleeping.”

“I’m serious. Someone tidied my kitchen. Is this a joke? Because it’s creepy and intrusive and who the fuck sneakily tidies a kitchen anyway?”

“I dunno.” Brad mumbles. “The cleaning fairy. I love you, man, but I’m tired. I’ll be over later.”

I didn’t even say goodbye. I just hung up. I stood frozen, the phone still in my hand. Me staring at my reflection in the glass cabinet that our best wine glasses stayed in, to make it look like we gave a shit. And behind me, with his chin on my shoulder, stood Chester.

“You’re not real.” I whispered. But his touch was like ice and a shiver ran down my spine.

I turned around, and he was gone.

***

Brad called me one day. He was hysterical, and I couldn’t understand a fucking word he was saying. “Have you been sniffing glue again, Brad?”

“Mike. You asshole. Come over here and get rid of these fucking things.”

I had no idea what he was talking about and assumed this was some cunning ruse to get me out of the house. I’d become an agoraphobic without the actual fear – I just had no desire to go outside at all. But I went anyway.

And when I got there…on every surface of Brad’s living room were hundreds of sponges.

Sponges of all shapes and sizes. Sponges of all the colours of the rainbow. Kitchen sponges. Bathroom sponges.

It probably should have been hilarious, but I couldn’t make my face smile.

I helped him pile all the sponges into the back of my car and I shipped them home. I stomped inside, carrying an electric blue bath sponge and slammed the front door. “Oh!” I yelled into the house. “So you’re haunting Brad too? What, am I not a good enough victim for you? Asshole!”

I don’t know why I was so angry. I felt like he was cheating on me. For months Chester was my own personal ghost. He tidied up when I got too drunk and trashed the place. This was all his fault anyway – he fucking owed me. If I was fucking up it was because I didn’t know how to function without him. And here he is, haunting some other guy.

I locked myself in the kitchen with the sponge and a pair of scissors and starting hacking chunks off of it. I’d meant to carve it into something, but realised I didn’t care enough. And went back to bed instead.

When I woke up the sponge was on the pillow beside me. Cut into the shape of a heart.

***

The therapist told me you can’t bargain with death. But when Chester stopped haunting me I figured it was worth a try. I left my bank card and my pin number on the dining table along with my paypal details and all the money in my wallet. In the morning they were still there. And when I called out for Chester I got no answer.

Alcohol didn’t help. Not even a little bit. Still, everything is worth a try. I sat on the patio with a bottle of vodka and cried. I understand how pathetic this is, but I’m that kind of drunk. Chester was always a touchy-feely drunk, which is how we hooked up in the first place.

The sky was cloudless and it was cold, but the stars were beautiful. “Please just let me have him back. Just for another day. I’ll do anything. Just one more day. With him dead or alive. Either. I need him here.”

The stars weren’t listening. God or whoever, he wasn’t listening either. There was silence all around me for the first time since Chester’s death. And I drank until I passed out.

***

Depression goes without saying. I never moved the sponge from Chester’s pillow but when things started to really go down hill I cried into it at night. Nobody told me how alone I’d feel. When he died I was distracted by being haunted. But now…

Some clever writer once wrote “we are all haunted and haunting.” But that’s bullshit. I wasn’t haunted or haunting. I wasn’t anything. I was, and my life was, such a non-event. I guess that’s how depression is. I probably should have gone to see the therapist, I probably should have called someone.

But I stayed in bed instead, and cried into my blue sponge instead.

***

The final stage of grief is acceptance.

But whatever.

The therapist said not everybody goes through every stage.

And since he left I’ve carved all of Brad’s sponges into animals.

I don’t know. Maybe this is acceptance. Maybe loneliness is acceptance.

Or maybe there’s only really four stages.

And a zoo made of sponge is the fifth for me.


End file.
